Data
by JMK758
Summary: We always see the Field Agents on the streets backed by occasional views of the Operations Team. This time we see a case as shown from Operations, and it is a case Eric and Nell will never forget.


'NCIS: Los Angeles' is owned by Belisarius Productions. The usual legal Disclaimers apply. You can find all my stories listed in order in my Profile.  
This story is not related to my on-going NCIS series, particularly not to the events that took place in 'Supervillain Affair' and 'In the Hearts of Men', and consequently it's not related to 'Princess Nell'. It is, in fact, closer to the development of the televised series.  
In 'NCIS:LA' we see Callen, Hanna, Blye and Deeks in the field supported by the Operations Team, but rarely do we witness much of what happens behind the scenes. This is my take.  
Rated R or NCis-17  
Please Review.

Data  
by JMK758

"Eric, have you found anything?" is how G Callen announces his arrival in the Operations Center, the second floor brain case of the NCIS headquarters.

Eric Beale glances back over his shoulder to see the four Field Agents approaching, accompanied by Owen Granger, NCIS' Assistant Director who takes an unusually sedate position in this gathering, not having led the agents in. "Good morning and no. I'm still running the kaleidoscope but haven't found the car, and since his GPS system is disabled I've been running traffic cam footage since I got in. Bupkis."

He's usually the one who summons the Agents up from their own enclave on the main floor, but that's when he has something to tell them and, forty five minutes into this Friday morning, he has less than nothing. The less is the empty chair beside his. 'Where _is_ Nell? It's not like her to be late, and going on an _hour_ late?' If ever Intelligence needed to be analyzed, it's now.

"He's hiding until he makes the meet." Sam Hanna knows that with no change from last night's status, their only chance to halt the gathering is to go in.

"All right," Callen says, "Kenzie, Deeks, go back over the list, hit up every place he's been over the past week and see if you can find–."

"Sorry I'm late," a feminine voice calls from the far door and Eric heaves a sigh of relief.

"Very nearly the late Nell Jones," Granger says, his deep gravelly voice threatening to dump said gravel upon her.

"I'm sorry. With tomorrow being Thanksgiving it seems everyone who wants to get out of the city today is being replaced by everyone who wants to get in, and they all want the same road."

Wheeeeee wheeeewwww* Marty Deeks' below the breath comment, one survivable only under the best of circumstances, pulls Eric around and his heart nearly stops.

x

Nell Jones, his petite redheaded partner and NCIS' Intelligence Analyst, is putting a large knapsack upon one of the far chairs but it's the dress she wears that locks his eyes. Though the room is kept at half intensity so the readouts of the various computer monitors are easily seen for long hours, she stands to the side of the slatted door in the light from the outer hall so the scarlet of her dress flares like the sun. It's sleeveless and looks little longer than a skater's dress. In fact, when she smooths it out before turning to them, the hem extends no lower than her fingertips, leaving her thighs two thirds bared. Her legs are, in fact, bare all the way down to her high heeled scarlet slippers.

"Mister Deeks," is all the reprimand Granger gives the detective but as Nell turns and crosses the room Eric's heart nearly explodes in his chest. The front of the staggeringly short dress dips into a V from her shoulders to even with the baseline of her breasts, not indecently baring anything but not obscuring much.

As she walks the length of the room Eric, unable to tear his eyes away from this so uncommon sight, feels tapping at the back of his head. He looks up to Sam Hanna beside him. At the moment, everyone's eyes are on the approaching woman and he and the tall black agent are in the rear. "Pay attention to your job," Hanna advises in as low a voice as possible, "before Granger tells you to pay attention to your job."

He breaks contact with his partner with the greatest of difficulty.

x

Nell slips into her seat to his left and focuses her attention on the screen before her. Eric, eyes dropping, can't help but lock on the hem of the scarlet dress which is nowhere near as long as it had been when she was standing up. She really does have very attractive legs, displayed now for the first time in weeks of wearing pants, and they're really soft and sleek. The expanse between hem and where her bare legs disappear under the edge of the workstation seems to

" _ERIC_!" Granger's voice is a whip crack.

"What? I mean, yes sir?"

"Welcome back to the meeting. I only had to call you three times."

"Sorry." Looking back he catches concern in Nell's eyes and 'I told you so' in Hanna's. "You were saying?"

"Yes, I was. I was _saying_ that you need to expand the search to a wider area."

"Yes, sir." He locks his eyes this time on his work and the meeting progresses behind him. Nell, on his left, continues her work on the financial dealings of their targets, attempting to find out how the trail leads from buyer to ultimate seller. He glances at the absorbed woman as she concentrates on her work, but his eyes slip down her neck and to the dress where, through the generous V, the swell and curve of her breast is only two inches of

"–Eric finds them, I want you and Hanna to be ready."

He has no idea what Granger told the Senior Field Agent, but he rips his eyes back to the screen and focuses on finding them – wherever they are.

x

The barely heard conversation gradually fades away until, glancing back at what he considers a safe moment, he finds the five agents gone. Turning back, wondering how five people could vanish like out of Star Trek, he sees Nell half turned to him, her face alight with concern.

"Are you all right?"

"Oh. Yeah. Sure. Why?"

"Well, you zoned out."

"Really? No. I'm fine. I didn't zone out."

She looks like she would push the point, but instead shakes her head and swivels her chair back to the bank of computers and monitors that constitute their world in Operations. The dim room is their enclave, hers and his, but...

"Kaleidoscope still has nothing on any of the vehicles. We lost them last night and I came in early and played every traffic cam in the area but it's like the van vanished."

"We'll find it," she assures him, but that assurance seems distant.

x

"So, you look... nice."

"Thank you," she says as distantly, eyes locked on the various interlinked accounts spread upon the screen before her.

"I've... ahh... never seen that dress before."

"Just got it," she says, not glancing at him.

He takes the chance and sneaks a downward peek. Yes, her legs really are spectacular, even in the low light of the surrounding computer monitors and the huge display screen behind and to their left. He wonders how she'd look in full light.

For a while he alternates glances between the screens and her thighs, two seconds at the displays before him for every second of the display to his left. She doesn't notice.

"So," he ventures, eyes on the screen for safety, "got any plans for the Thanksgiving?"

"I'm leaving this evening for the weekend, New York."

"Really?"

She still doesn't look at him. "I want to see the Parade. My hotel has an inside pool and sauna, and I bought a bikini I want to try out."

"Bi-bik-kininini?"

This does pull her attention and she shifts her upper body toward him. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." He realizes too late that it had come out at 78rpm. But she turns back with a shake of her head.

"I think when we're done here you should go home and go to bed."

When he looks at her he can't help it, his eyes drop to the top of the swell of her breast. But she starts to turn and he turns his head so fast he nearly wrenches his neck.

Thank God she didn't notice.

"So, you got any plans?"

"Not really," he admits, in the back of his mind wishing his plans included her in that pool in that bikini. "Think I'll just stay home."

"Sounds exciting."

"It's not like anyone invited me out for the weekend or anything."

"Too bad."

"Yeah."

xx

The next hour is a nightmare. Normally he and Nell work as a smooth team but for some reason he can't stop stealing glances at her, at her legs beyond the short - really short - hem, at the changing view up top whenever she reaches for a control on one of the instruments before her. The dress doesn't gape, not as though he could see anything... much of anything... a lot of anything... not completely. He simply can't stop hoping that her next movement–

"Eric, would you call the others?"

He can't pull his eyes from the curve of her left breast, can almost see a few inches... "Others?"

She turns to him and he looks up so quickly his eyeballs almost bounce in their sockets. He reads annoyance on her face. Did she catch him? "Yes, others. You know? Whistle up the team."

"Oh, those others."

He gets away from the station as quickly as he can, wondering how much of an idiot he can convince her that he is. Going out into the light, he descends halfway down the steps to his Summons spot, sticks two fingers between his lips and blows a hissing breath.

Annoyed, knowing the cause in that his mouth feels really tight, he tries again and this wheefting hiss warbles. Really annoyed, he takes a deep breath, gets his fingers and tongue positioned, blows hard and pops his ears out because his tongue _wasn't_ in the proper position.

When he can get his eyes back where they belong, having actually felt air escape, Sam Hanna is looking up at him. "You're gonna blow your hair off if you do that again."

"Please," Kenzie Blye says as she leaves her desk, "two bald guys is too many."

Fortunately for his dignity he only has to endure six more quips as the four agents follow him.

x

The four Field Agents gather a few feet back from the huge display screen as Nell, standing left of the screen, leads them through her discoveries. But Eric returns to his chair where he can watch the briefing and, as he sits down, he's instantly aware that there's something far more interesting than the briefing - not that the information presented by his partner isn't vital - to be seen.

The screen displays much more than it usually does as its light illuminates his partner's scarlet dress, which does - as he'd thought - only come down to the tips of her fingers while a most generous length of silky legs is spotlighted all the way down to her scarlet high heeled slippers.

Eric pays attention to the vital information with his full attention... three quarters... half... no, not quite a quarter of his mind. As he listens, watching the movements of the woman as the changing displays increase, decrease and shift the light that shines on her, he hears her voice but not quite her words. Leaning on the workstation, the side of his chin resting on his fist, he watches the petite woman in the even more petite dress, one movement shifting into the next until it's like watching a very slow ballet or perhaps the smooth display on an ice rink. He's aware that images on the screen are changing, but only so far as they increase, decrease or enhance the light shining on Nell.

The next thing he's aware of is Nell seated beside him. "Well, that has a good chance."

He swivels his head, dreamlike, and looks at her. "Yeesssss," he says kindly, the word ending in a very satisfied sigh.

x

A moment later her face is close to his, quite close, close enough so he could lean a few inches forward and kiss... and the other men and women in the room have vanished. When did that happen? _"Are_ you all right?" she asks, voice intense. He blinks and there's no softness in her eyes, no kiss on her lips.

"What?"

"I'm really worried about you. All through that you didn't move, didn't say a word, now it looks like you're not even here." She sits back. "I think you should go home."

"NO!"

She'd jumped back but rallies. "Geez, don't bite my head off. Okay, you can stay."

"I'm sorry." He'd sooner cut off a finger as go home today. Seeing the concern in her eyes, he scales back. "I mean no, I'm fine. I'm... distracted, that's all."

"Well, whatever it is that's distracting you, I suggest you send it packing before you zone out in front of Hetty."

"No." He sits up straight. "No, you're right. You're right." He locks his attention on the screen before him. "I'll be... a blue nosed gopher."

"Huh?"

"It's them. Look!" Five blocks from where he'd lost contact with Donato's van, it's suddenly on the screen, big as life and three times as dangerous. "It's on Darwin and Hancock, heading north." He looks over his shoulder to the empty room, "Where's Callen?"

x

He turns to Nell, who's looking at him as though counting his heads. "They left, remember? Astarte Casino?"

"Oh, yeah." He presses the control that will connect him to the agent's ear wig. "Callen, I found Donato's van, it's headed north on Hancock from Darwin."

/Good work, Eric. Keep a lock on it and tell Deeks./

"Right."

He relays the message, and in the next moment Nell's right hand is on his wrist. He stares at that beautiful hand holding his, then traces up her wrist, her forearm, up higher all the way to her half bare shoulder, along the lovely field of that generous V with the swell of her breasts visible and he watches for a moment the gentle rise and fall as she breathes. He pulls his eyes away with the greatest reluctance up her chest to her neck, to her face, to the very intense look in her eyes.

The world everyone else inhabits snaps on and he feels the steady pressure of her two fingers on his wrist, held by her thumb on the back of his hand. "I don't like your pulse. It races, slows down, kicks up again. I think there's really something wrong."

"I'm fine," he insists. "There's nothing wrong with me. Trust me." He leans in closely, eyes staring deeply into hers. "Trust me."

It's a few moments before she answers. "I shouldn't... but I will." She sounds like she doesn't believe him and he can't blame her. "But one more time you zone out and I'm calling Hetty."

"Promise. I'll be fine." He reaches for his keyboard. "Let's get to work."

It's a good ten seconds before she says "Okay" but he can see she's reluctant to turn away.

Hanna does call and he manages to field the information needed without making a fool of himself, but with his attention split between duty and work and the pleasure of the woman beside him it's so not easy.

xx

He's determined to be careful, and as the minutes pass he decides he's struck a balance. He keeps working, but when her attention is focused he indulges in a glance, mostly down to her legs because if he looks higher he risks attracting her attention. Once she takes a deep breath, stretches her body in the chair, reaches up high and he nearly has a coronary when the dress pulls tight along every inch of her, then the V gapes as she relaxes. She leans forward onto her left elbow on the workstation, leans down comfortably, shoulders relaxed as she reads her screen and the gap spreads enough so he can see her left breast in all its glory all the way to her pink nipple.

She rests like that for a while, staring at the screen and he's sure she's oblivious to what she's showing him as he memorizes every millimeter of her breast. And as he stares at her while facing the screen, the strain well worth it, he could even swear her nipple is harder than it was a few moments ago.

x

She sits back, ending the view but he can't keep from glancing either high or low, brief glimpses as she works, unaware of his eyes on her. He pets her legs with his eyes, cautious for any movement that would mean she's about to glance at him, but she doesn't and he continues memorizing every bit of her.

He starts to look away when she moves, but she shifts her chair backward, leans back and crosses her legs, right over left, her eyes on the moving images on the screen as she'd tapped into Callen's dash cam. It's a perfectly natural position but for him it changes the view sharply. Her hem fell away, unnoticed by her but now he can see her thigh almost up to her hip, can see to the back of her leg and she doesn't know what he sees. He keeps his head forward so she can't suspect but the screen before him has lost all appeal.

She slowly swings her right leg in rhythmic sways and the play of muscles, the shifts of her flesh is hypnotic. She's oblivious to him, to his gazes, to his stares.

She's focused on her work, eyes never leaving her screen, totally oblivious that the display she's giving him is far more intense than any cataclysmic data that can come from the computers.

He tries to keep his eyes forward but even so all his attention is on his peripheral view, now of the full length of her body. This case has deadly and International ramifications and yet ten percent of his attention is on NCIS and its concerns, ninety on the woman beside him.

x

/We've got him,/ says Callen's voice over the speaker before them and he forces his attention to the screen before her as she sits forward. On the monitor the image from the car's dash cam shows the target vehicle.

/On your six,/ Blye confirms.

/Go around him, cut him off and we'll back you up./

The take-down is almost anticlimactic considering the value of the target. Caught off guard, Donato doesn't fire a weapon against the four surrounding Agents and part two of the operation goes down with satisfactory dispatch.

"Well, that's that," Nell declares. "Next stop, the Boat Shed." She changes the feed on her screen and the two monitor views of the Annex appear. She leans on the desk, her left hand on a control and is completely unaware of the view she gifts him with. He leans a bit closer to his own unit, the angle better than–

She pushes back in the rolling chair and his heart jumps. "I've had it with this," she declares and his heart nearly stops.

"What?" he asks, scared to death that she's going to get Hetty. Has he been less cautious than he'd thought? He'd been so careful that she wouldn't notice. Did she? Is she going to report him to Hetty? Maybe she'll never wear a dress like this again?

"That!" She snaps her hand toward her monitor and when he looks it's definitely wobbling, a small but very evident shimmer. "I thought I fixed that _yesterday_."

She crosses the length of the room, her scarlet heels clacking on the floor and the dress playing about her hips and thighs as she walks into and out of the light of the big screen. She pulls the ladder from its storage spot in the left corner by the sliding slated door, carries it to one of the high cabinets beside it and opens sets it up, her movements sharp. Climbing the steps, she opens the cabinet and his seated view is very engaging.

Looking into the high cabinet, she takes a step higher and sighs. "Eric, could you give me a hand?"

x

His eyes traveling from neck down the scarlet dress to and over her derrière, down her bare legs to her ankles and the scarlet high heels, he would be so happy to give her a hand. Fortunately, he breaks the spell before she can look over her shoulder, and in that time he's up out of his chair and crossing to her.

Now an imbecile would offer to trade places with her but she's up so high that the hem of her dress is level with his eyes. He reaches up, grips her bare legs a micrometer below that hem.

His heart pounds so hard she has to be able to hear it, but she gives no sign. Holding her steady, he enjoys the feel of her smooth flesh, the warmth and suppleness of her legs, her slight motions as she works for balance - and his heart nearly stops when she reaches up and her dress follows suit. Now the hem is well above his eyes and her bare legs inches before him.

"Darn it. I still can't reach it. Hold on." She steps up on the final step.

x

Now his heart is racing. She's well above him, her hemline over his head. He just can't help it. He ducks his head the bare inches he needs.

His eyes bulge and his heart tries to batter its way out of his chest, slams against his sternum hard enough to shatter it. He's breathing so hard she has to feel it on her bare legs. Any harder and he's going to blow her off the ladder.

'That - is - the - _smallest_ \- red - thong - I've - seen - in - my - entire - _life_!'

Her cheeks are bare. The strip is almost invisible caught between them. Her soft lips peek out either side of the strip and he stares so hard his eyeballs virtually massage her, pet her–!

"Coming down," she announces and he barely pulls his head back in time as she steps down backward. He can't let go of her legs, the movements of her muscles massage his hands and only the smallest part of his amygdala, that part of the brain dedicated to survival, prevents him from keeping his hands as high as they were so they would slip under her dress with her.

But the rest of his brain doesn't keep up with that survival instinct so when she steps down past his eyes, her bottom swaying to her motions past his eyes and she reaches the floor and turns around he hasn't stepped back. Less than a quarter inch separates them. If she takes too deep a breath her breasts will stroke him.

"Excuse me."

"Hmm?"

"Eric."

"What?"

" _Excuse_ me."

"Oh. Er. Yes. Right." He does get out of her way and she walks past, carrying the small cardboard box containing the needed circuit and not knowing in the slightest what he'd seen and what it had done to him.

Picking up the ladder and folding it, he wonders how many circuits _he_ needs, because nothing in his brain is functioning. If he doesn't get some control of his emotions, and he's shaking as hard as his heart is beating, he will indeed see Hetty before the day is over - to pick up his pink slip.

x

He stows the ladder in its usual corner, turns and his heart, thumping in his chest, stops dead.

Nell lays on her back, half her body under the workstation as she works on one of the circuit boxes deep within the unit. Seeing her laying there he halts, breath stolen, but then his feet bring him, as though he were an automaton, back across the room. He freezes by the large display screen because, to reach into the control systems, she bends her right knee up, plants her high red heel onto the floor to balance herself and reaches higher.

He's not exactly sure what she's doing, having barely paid attention to the computer issue, but the view he has now rivals that at the ladder. By the light of the screen he can see her lips on either side of the so thin strip and she's so focused she's unaware of the show she's giving him.

His heart's slamming so hard he's almost dizzy but he's engraving this moment on every brain cell. She's so beautiful and at this angle–

And she doesn't know.

She can't know.

x

He's frozen, doesn't dare to move. If he moves she might become aware of him, become aware of the show she's unintentionally giving and perhaps might be aware of the thoughts in his head. He stands rigid, realizing that word has long ago adopted a double meaning, but he dares not move, just stares, memorizes, indulges in a rapid series of dreams until, with a sigh of satisfaction, she starts to boost herself out of the tight cave, her high heels and elbows helping her to shift back bit by bit.

He steps forward as she sits up and reaches for her, takes her right hand in his left and helps her to her feet. But in that moment, before she's upright, the front of her dress gapes forward and for an instant her breasts are laid open to him.

It's only an instant but that's a glimpse he'll remember for the rest of his life.

Then, her soft hand in his, he's staring into her eyes, staring, staring into her so deep brown eyes, Earth tone like a fertile...

He gradually becomes aware that she's saying something.

x

"–th to Eric. Come in, Eric."

"Huh?"

"Can I have my hand back now?"

"Huh?"

She changes her mind. "You know what, keep it." She turns, reaches for the back of her chair. "But I've got to get to work _NOW_ –"

Her partial scream ends with her lips slammed against his and it's only then that he realizes he'd yanked her back around, off her feet and into his tight grip about her body. The kiss is half cry against his lips, half utterances of her struggle as she pushes against him, tries to pull back away from his lips against the fold of his left elbow behind her holding her head still.

She fights, pushes against him, struggles against his right arm hard on her back pressing her chest to his and he can only kiss her harder, hold her tighter.

He can't stop.

He doesn't dare let go.

She writhes against his body but isn't strong enough to break away as the kiss grows more intense and her body is trapped against his. Her struggles are like the frenzy of sex as their bodies move together.

He can't soften the kiss. He realizes its been building all day but he didn't intend to do it this way and now dares not stop!

x

Gradually her high pitched protests grow quiet, her struggles less intense, then less and less as she stops fighting. They've been kissing for two whole minutes and he can't stop, can't let her stop.

She's stopped struggling, stopped fighting his grip and he holds her less tightly. She's quiet now, her breaths coming hard against his cheek.

How it had happened he doesn't know. It just happened.

He hadn't meant to do it. It had just happened.

But he's kissing her and she's not fighting him. Her lips are softer, her body relaxing against his, her former screams now softened to moans and hums.

He hadn't known he would kiss her, and now that he is he doesn't know how to stop.

But as the third minute goes by he figures he'd better.

x

He pulls back, lets her go, takes a quarter step back and she steps back as well. He's looking into her lovely face but he doesn't see love in it. He sees her right shoulder dip but doesn't take in the significance.

x

The _CRACK_! is deafening, the pain in the left side of his face immediate and brutal, the high pitched whistle in his ear like a siren.

He shakes his head, which almost clears it but doesn't do much for the rest of the problems. He looks down into her stormy expression and realizes something has gone really, really wrong.

" _Eric_! _Beale_!"

"I'm sorry!"

"As God is my witness–"

"I don't know what came over me!"

Her fist clenches the neckline of his shirt.

"By the time we come back from New York you are going to know the _proper_ way to kiss a woman."

She pulls him down into his first lesson.


End file.
